Now on jacobchristensen.eu

Day: 2008-11-27

While I’m busy not posting interesting updates, I’ll just note that I communicated with my web-hotel about the domain issue. The host promises that things have been sorted out with the registrar – but on my control panel, the domain still appears to expire on November 28.

What we have witnessed in recent months is not only the fracturing of the world’s financial system but the discrediting of an academic discipline. There are some 4000 university finance professors worldwide, thousands of finance research papers are published each year, and yet there have been few if any warnings from the academic community of the incendiary potential of global financial markets. Is it too harsh to conclude that despite the considerable academic resources that go into finance research our understanding of the behaviour of financial markets is no greater than it was in 1929/33 or indeed 1720?

Iceland’s meltdown was caused by the rapid emergence of an oversized banking sector and accompanying domestic credit creation, asset bubbles and excessive indebtedness that all this encouraged. This column draws lessons from this crisis and suggests Iceland should join the EU if it wants to stand a chance at keeping its well-educated young people from emigrating.